The ultimate course of Lithuanian history was determined at the outbreak of the Second World War by the provisions of the secret protocols to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939. In the original agreement of August 23, Lithuania was placed within the German sphere of influence with both powers recognizing Lithuania's interest in the Vilnius area which since the 1920 coup by General Lucjan Żeligowski had been under Polish sovereignty — to Lithuania's constant chagrin. In this same treaty, Latvia and Estonia were allotted to the Soviet Union. On September 28, however, this agreement received significant alterations, and Lithuania was now placed within the Soviet sphere with only one strip of land in the Southwest of Lithuania to be left for Germany. In exchange for this, the province of Lublin and parts of the province of Warsaw were transferred to the German sphere.

Estonia emerged from World War I economically devastated, with no significant industrial base to build its economy. Yet, within twenty years, it had come to play an important economic role among the Baltic states and seemed destined to assume an equally important position throughout northeastern Europe because of its wise development of its vast oil shale deposits.

Translating and publishing of Baltic drama in an organized fashion has been going on since the fall of 1973 at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (SIU-C) under the auspices of the Baltic Theatre project. A group of some twenty individuals of Baltic descent consisting of university professors, graduate students, and volunteers from other walks of life have translated more than sixty Baltic plays. Three of the translated plays have been produced by the Theatre Department of SIU-C and four others by either profesional American theatres, universities, or amateur groups. The first volume of a Baltic-drama anthology, Confrontations with Tyranny, has been published recently.

The development of university courses and programs in Ukrainian studies is a recent phenomenon in the ninety-year-old history of Ukrainians in Canada. It begins only with the end of World War II and coincides with the influx of the postwar immigration. Not only did this newest Ukrainian-Canadian population provide the bulk of the teaching staff for Ukrainian programs, but also the development of courses and programs was greatly stimulated by the educational needs of the various generations in this sector of the Ukrainian population. Prior to 1945, university courses in Ukrainian studies did not exist at Canadian universities. In evaluating the late arrival of Ukrainian studies on Canadian campuses, one should not lose sight of the fact that Slavic studies in this country are a relatively new development, stimulated by the last war and in particular by the need to deal with the Soviet allies. The first courses in the Russian language were introduced only in 1943, at Carleton College and Dalhousie University. The development of Ukrainian programs quickly followed the instroduction of Russian studies in Canada.

The New York Times welcomed, as did we all, the appearance of two excellent recent books, Hedrick Smith's The Russians and Robert Kaiser's Russia. But the reviewer began by saying, “It is amazing—worse it is alarming—to realize how little one knows about the Soviet Union.”1 This notion that we know little about Russia is an old one, of course, and has had its uses. One need but recall Churchill's famous tag about Russia as enigma wrapped in mystery to remember that declarations of ignorance can be used to spur action. Nonetheless, it should be clear by now that whatever else may be said about the notion of our ignorance concerning Russia, one can no longer simply say that it is true. American scholars for many years now have probed with remarkable success all aspects of the Russian experience. Yet the notion persists that we do not know Russia at all well. Why does this notion persist? What can, or should, be done about it? While definitive answers to such questions are too much to expect of any brief essay, the goal of this paper is to sketch at least the broad outlines of what appear to be some reasonable answers.

Personal independence of scientists, particularly in social sciences, presents a multidimensional problem. We propose to base our observations mainly on the careers of scientists in Poland, as seen against the background of the relations between the power elite and the cultural elite in a communist country. There are differences in time and place, but certain general tendencies can be observed.